6. Variants & House Rules
Recognised Forms of Play
- Normal games between two opponents face to face (11.1.1)
- Simultaneous displays — one player facing a number of opponents at once (11.1.2)
- Correspondence games, the moves sent alternately (11.1.3)
- Blindfold play against a sighted opponent, without looking at a board and without recording (11.1.4), and blindfold simultaneous displays (11.1.5)
- Games with a blind player, using a board with pieces in relief (11.1.6)
- Handicap games in which the stronger player starts one or more pieces down (11.1.7)
- Every form except ordinary face-to-face play has its own specific regulations (11.2); for correspondence and blindfold play the board is treated as if placed between the two players (11.3)
Time Control
- A game may require a set number of moves in a given time, which makes a playing clock and full move-by-move transcription obligatory (10.1, 10.2.1, 10.2.2)
- A game may instead give each player a fixed time to the end, in which case the clock is obligatory but recording is not (10.3, 10.4)
- Clock handling itself lives in the FMJD Rules for Competitions, not in these game rules (10.5)
International Draughts Compared with Checkers
- The FMJD game uses a 100-square board with 20 men a side (2.1, 2.7); English draughts and American checkers use a 64-square board with 12 men a side and are governed separately
- In the international game men capture backwards (4.1); in English draughts they do not
- The international king is a flying king, sliding any distance along a diagonal (3.9); the English king moves one square
- The majority-capture rule (4.13) has no counterpart in English draughts, where any available capture may be chosen